The Stuff That Goes On In My Head….

Inconsistencies

I’ve been thinking about a few things. I’ve been thinking about how we can believe two things that are contradictory and not realize it. Surely, we all do this at times.

There was an interview on MSNBC where Rachel Maddow spoke with Frank Schaeffer about the people who disagree with Obama’s healthcare plan. Mr. Schaeffer believes this is the right-wing evangelical group that was started by his father, him and Dr. C. Everett Koop. He said they don’t like for women to be appointed to positions in government. However, there are folks who don’t want Obamacare but who support Sarah Palin enthusiastically. For goodness’ sake, they want her to be president, not just appointed to a court or some other position. I know from reading his blog that Frank Schaeffer is aware of support for Palin among evangelicals. He said in the interview that the right-wing folks’ “brains broke” and he seems to think they all think alike. Either he’s being inconsistent in his view of the protesters or he really doesn’t understand them. Or, both. How could folks not want a woman to be appointed to a government position but want to elect one for president? (Besides, I’ve got news for Mr. Schaeffer. The right-wingers are not the only people who disagree with the idea that the government should provide healthcare!)

Another inconsistency I’ve noticed is – and I’m sorry I’m about to step on toes here…well, shoot…I step on toes a lot – anyway, I’ve noticed that there are people who don’t want government healthcare but they have Medicare and they want to keep it. What is Medicare? It’s government healthcare. I don’t want government-run healthcare and I’ve never wanted Medicare for myself but there’s no choice. If it’s still solvent in a few years, I’ll have it. I don’t think it should be taken away from people who are depending on it. They’ve been set up to depend on this and it would be cruel to snatch it away. (By the way, I had to deal with Medicare years ago when my husband’s grandma died and it was one hassle after another. I told them if they didn’t get their stuff straight they would owe me for gin and Kleenex. No more problems. You might want to try that sometime.)

The other thing I’ve noticed has to do with people who don’t think it’s wrong for us to use waterboarding and other torture methods on suspected terrorists. Well, aside from the pragmatic reasons that it doesn’t work and only helps terrorists recruit more terrorists and we lose credibility to say to other countries that they shouldn’t do that AND, it’s cruel and the United States is not supposed to be cruel – it IS against the law. These are law-abiding Americans but they would ignore the law under certain circumstances. That’s inconsistent.